Hurrah, 3 cheers for NiGHTS, the original Sega Saturn NiGHTS that is, it was 15 years ago today that the inovative flying platformer by Sonic Team was released over in Japan. Lead by Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic the Hedghog, NiGHTS focuses on flying round a course collecting orbs and flying through hoops which counts up links for extra score, the more links one has atained the less time there is to sucessfully continue the combo, the higher the score the higher the grade. If ever there was a game for online leader boards it is this, http://www.scoreattack.net/ filled this gap for a while but hasnt been updated or supported in a while, instead Charlie has moved things to http://nidscores.com/ and is now the place to compete with other fans.
NiGHTS into Dreams came with the 3D aaolog controller, which has a different feel than current analog pads out there, and is far better for the control of NiGHTS, at the time analog controllers were very new, the n64 was the first console to come with it and that was released less than a few weeks before NiGHTS.
Complementing the visual appeal of nights and its fluid gameplay was an incredibly delight of music, composed mainly by Naofumi Hataya, Tomoko Sasaki and Fumie Kumatani and changing acompanyments depending on the mood of the Nightopians that enhabited the level, NiGHTS into dreams used a the A-Life system where by nights could hatch nightopian eggs and release a new friendly nightopian into the world, sometimes they would have their own little actions like singing or sleeping etc, if NiGHTS paralooped near them though it would be very bad, and they would be unhappy an the Background music would change to reflect this, not in a cinimatic piece way just as a slight change in the melody of the BGM until they were happier.
In celebration of the 15 years of NiGHTS, http://www.nid15.com/ is gathering votes to get the original ported over to modern consoles, much like Guardian heroes and radiant silvergun are getting a second chance real soon. Though NiGHTS had a second chance in Japan only in 2008 with an updated graphics release for the ps2. We’re hoping this could make it easier to port it to XBLA.
As a NiGHTS fan i have collected some err colelctables? including some soundtrack cd’s released in Japan, some and the japanese versions of the game, including the special Christmas promo which is the bestest Christmasy feeling game EVER. Love it.
the picture above starting in the top left has the dreampack collection for ps2 which comes with a book below it and the ps2 gameto the right, above that is the sega saturn christmas nights japan release. to the right of that is the original 1996 release of the soundtrack and the other below is a 3 disc set titled “perfect collection” which was released in 2008 at the same time the ps2 version of the game was released. Top right is the Uk origianl game packaged with the 3D controller, my original christmas nights game from when i purchased Daytone cce from electronics boutique, and a spare. Below is the japanese sega saturn game and UK saturn game, the version from the anolog box set and a version that came as just the game in the regular tall box. Moving left is one of the japanese guides to NiGHTS, thenthe english guide, and finally a classic sega saturn magazine with a nights feature. I also have the japanese white analog controler for nights, and the christmas nights disc that came with sega saturn magazine one year.
Further more to my boring insights into what stuff i have are the unboxing videos dibbs ahoy took when i opend up some of my nights music cds recently purchased from ebayers in Japan.
That’s some serious Nights action! But where’s Journey of Dreams? Only kidding! Sega are probably still having copies of that game surgically removed from their anus to this day!
Nice use of a table for your display purposes by the way. Certainly you learned a great lesson from the infamous console collection photo. I joke, I joke of course!
gotta be more classy for the blog posts lol
i think i only did that console photo to show broom what a loser i am, she wasn’t believing me at the time. soon put that right haha